


Sunrise

by blackPlague



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, cries a lil, got so far, i tried so hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackPlague/pseuds/blackPlague
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>dean didn't mean to fall in love with his brother.</p><p>it just.</p><p>happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading e. e. cummings the other day. This is my grotesque, incestuous tribute to him. (He's probably rolling in his grave right now.)
> 
> **EDIT ON OCTOBER 15TH, 2015: Incest is bad okay, I wrote this two years ago. I have learned since then. (And I will not lie, I like how this turned out, no matter how messed up it sounds.**

up 

up 

up and at 'em,

time to chase another sunrise.

dean likes to pretend he's got a lasso on his belt big enough to ensnare the sun.

he entertains the idea of bottling it up, putting it up on the shelf where he keeps all of his priceless belongings.

read: he only has one and that's sam.

dean swears that boy's smile could challenge his bottled sunshine.

he grips the steering wheel tighter while sam reads in the passenger seat. puts his foot on the accelerator and chases down the sun. he feels like he's racing it down to the end of the world.

but he learned when he was young that the earth doesn't end. 

it just. 

keeps going. 

the earth is like a circle, and circles have no discernible beginnings or ends, and

dean would draw a parallel between his love for sam and circles, if he could.

but he sits there and thinks about the sun and the earth and the air and everything that surrounds him and _sam_ , who is worth a thousand sunrises and a thousand circles. 

the sun wins that day, but dean knows it'll be back to challenge him again tomorrow. 

for now, he'll settle for the lone moon and its neighboring stars, 

framing the night in beautiful artwork, and

bathing life in pale white,

baptizing it, christening the end of the day.

sam sleeps but dean doesn't.

dean looks at the dark, pale road and remembers, thinks about his past, hated math classes and how the teacher once said,

parallel lines run next to each other for all eternity and never meet, but that

intersecting lines meet once and keep going without ever seeing each other again. 

he mulls this over, trying to discern which set of lines has it worse,

decides they both suck

realizes that what he and sam have aren't lines, 

they're spirals, 

hopelessly entwined in each other, and that they are

unmistakably, 

wholeheartedly, 

unwaveringly

tangled.

the knots around his ankles don't bother him now, but

they sure trip him up when he's running from his demons. 

\---

in his dream, sam dies. 

he wakes up shivering, half a scream dying on his lips.

it's terrifying but not

as terrifying as the idea that

it might actually 

happen.

beside him, sam is already awake, worry etched on his features. 

"i'm fine," dean says gruffly, and starts the car back up, 

gets them back on the road

back to chasing the sunrise. 

dean's hands don't stop shaking until they're almost to their destination, but

he doesn't want to stop driving, 

he needs to prove to himself that he is not just a man,

he is the one who could trap the sunlight in a bottle, and

not share it with anyone else.

all he can think about is sam, sam, _sam_.

sam fills dean's brain like air fills his lungs. 

\---

sam rattles off facts about the thing they are going to be hunting, leafing through his research papers.

dean half-listens, drumming his fingers on the wheel impatiently and trying really hard not to look at sam's profile. his brother's face is stubbly with half a day's worth of 5 o'clock shadow and his long hair is tucked behind his ears.

dean sucks in a breath and tries to clear his head of everything not having to do with the upcoming hunt. case in point: sam. 

he didn't mean to fall in love with his brother, it just

happened. 

and he so wishes it hadn't.

\---

they find a motel in the outskirts of town and turn in early: dean under the guise of feeling a bit off and sam nodding along and mumbling something about more research.

dean says goodnight and turns onto his side, trying to negate sam's existence by not looking at him. 

he doesn't sleep though he tries. he stays up, eyes wide and mind racing, listening to the unmistakable sounds of sam doing research. 

sam mumbles under his breath, scratches something out on motel stationary and types on his laptop.

dean aches to know what sam's breath on his neck feels like.

finally, sam goes to bed with the click of a light switch and a whispered, "goodnight, dean."

it takes dean a moment of panic and three full minutes of analyzing to figure out that

sam didn't say it because he knew dean was awake.

he said it just _because._

the fact excites dean more than it should.

he blinks and it's morning.

sam is just sitting there with a stupid grin on his stupid perfect face. 

dean wants to punch it off. 

"well good morning, sleeping beauty. i was starting to think i'd have to kiss you awake."

dean grimaces, groans and asks, "what time is it?"

"8 in the morning."

dean buries his head back into the tough pillow. 

the day starts and dean starts to get sick of sam's face at around midday. they're having lunch after a day of interviews and dean starts to pointedly ignore his brother. 

by the time they get back to the motel, sam is bubbling over, bursting out with, "you wanna tell me what the hell's going on with you today?"

dean shrugs, averting his brother's gaze.

"don't know what you're talking about."

sam scoffs, rolls his eyes, shrugs off his fed suit and

takes off his shirt. 

dean runs a hand over his face, tries not to stare. 

averts his eyes, races to the bathroom, breathing heavily. he needs to get this under control before it kills the both of them. 

\---

next day, the hunt starts. 

dean keeps ignoring sam.

sam gets more and more irritated by dean as the minutes go by.

and there's a rift growing between them.

dean knows that sam feels it

yet he can't stop drifting away.

they speed their way through the hunt, finding the thing and sending it off to the afterlife.

they pack up, check out, get back on the road. 

the sun's almost set for the day, but

dean still tries to catch up to it.

he and sam don't speak for the rest of the night.

they stop off at a diner, a small mom-n'-pop place that has a total of three customers, including themselves. 

sam tries to start a conversation three times.

dean avoids starting a conversation three times. 

they eat in silence. 

back in the car, sam glares out the window, determined to kill anything that passes his line of sight while dean tries to strangle the steering wheel.

hours pass this way. 

the silence turns deafening but neither try to break it.

the sun starts rising and dean is drowning in the desperation that maybe sam is starting to hate him when,

"stop the car."

"wha–"

"dean, i said stop the goddamned car!"

the impala screeches to a halt on the deserted highway. 

sam opens his door and steps out even before the car has fully stopped. 

dean follows suit.

the road they've stopped on is bordered with corn fields on both sides. the corn almost glows in the birthing sunrise. 

sam exudes anger from his pores, and dean feels it directed at him.

dean almost cowers back into the driver's seat, while sam clenches and unclenches his fists, his back turned on dean. 

sam runs a rough hand through his hair, mumbling, "i can't do this, i can't fucking do this."

dean asks before he can stop himself: "do what?"

sam explodes.

"this, dean! i can't do this! this– this sick game of chicken where you just bottle everything up and completely ignore my existence!"

dean freezes.

"are you going to talk to me? i'm your fucking brother for god's sake!"

dean tries to swallow to parch his dry throat, but then

his feet have a mind of their own and,

he advances on sam, rounding the car in quick strides.

dean is so, _so_ close, and he can smell sam's tacky aftershave, so he just

grabs sam's collar,

looks into his eyes

clenches his hand into a fist,

and punches sam right on his cheekbone.

sam audibly yelps and punches back without thinking.

just like that, 

they are trading blows on the dirt next to the highway.

dean feels his nose break under sam's punches, and yeah,

sam has height and body mass on dean but,

dean has always been quicker.

so he dodges a few blows and gets away with a few punches to sam's midriff that leave his younger brother breathless on the dirt.

but then sam lunges at him and pins him down. 

"what the fuck," sam pants,

"was that?"

dean thrashes in sam's grip. he is not going down this easily.

but sam holds steady and soon,

dean falls limp, breathless and dirty and broken.

sam loosens his grip and dean scrambles back, leaning against the impala, bloody, dusty hands on his face.

he curls in on himself.

sam moves towards dean.

"stay away from me, sam."

"but why–"

"stay away! can't you see that i'm—"

clenches his eyes shut.

"i am not a good person."

"dean," sam says softly.

"leave, sam. just go away."

he can hear sam shifting, and he sneaks a look at his younger brother, who is

actually walking away.

dean shifts,

pulls at his hair,

closes his eyes,

and mumbles to himself, "i'm in love with you, sammy."

it sounds so grotesque on his tongue, so foreign and mangled, he almost throws up.

he wonders who the last person to tell sam they loved him was.

sam comes back ten minutes later, standing a measured distance from dean and leaning against the car. 

he doesn't say anything.

dean tries to get his breathing under control.

he exhales, long and slow, 

gets up, still avoiding his brother's gaze,

throws the keys at sam.

dean opens the passenger side door and leans against the window, clenching his eyes shut and trying to sleep, just sleep for a few blessed hours. 

he's dreaming even before sam gets the impala back on the road.

\---

sam wakes dean when they get to a motel. 

it is smack dab in the middle of town, right between a bar and a church.

the irony of it is not lost on dean, who scoffs when he sees it.

the motel is named haven. 

not the most fitting name, he decides. 

dean shoulders his way through the door and into the bathroom.

needs to wash himself of the side-road dirt and of his viscous sins. 

there are some things soap just cannot wash out, no matter how long you scrub at them.

he steps out of the shower to realize,

he didn't bring his clothes in with him so

he'll have to go look for them outside. 

he really hopes sam is not there. 

his hopes are crushed when he sees sam sitting on cheap plastic chair, feet leaning on the table, cheek now swollen and purple from his blows 

sam scoffs,

"you took your time in there, cinderella. sure you washed yourself enough?"

dean flips him off weakly and starts rummaging through his bag for clean clothes.

sam walks behind him, way too close for comfort and dean actually pauses his movements while sam passes.

the door to the bathroom closes and dean releases the breath he didn't know he was holding.

this needs to stop. he cannot keep dreading his brother's presence. he needs to wake up and smell the truth, in that sam would find him a disgusting piece of shit if he ever found out his secret.

sam comes out of the bathroom toweling off his hair, smelling of that rank aftershave that dean has still not grown accustomed to. 

dean glances at him over the newspaper he's reading.

sam turns on the tv.

they continue to not speak for the rest of the day.

not until dean announces that he found a job.

which sam pointedly ignores.

"hey asshat, did you hear me? said i got us a job."

sam shrugs.

"what's wrong with you?"

sam shrugs again. 

dean huffs and throws the newspaper at sam. 

"wake up, sammy! it's a job."

sam shrugs and shakes his head, "so?"

"so? so what?"

"i'm not going anywhere,"

he sits up and turns off the tv.

"not until you tell me what the hell is gnawing at your ass, dean."

dean scowls, "well for the most part, right now it's you."

"dean."

"what do you want me to do, spill my feelings out at you like i'm a little girl and you're my diary?" 

dean chuckles, "i'll pass, thanks."

sam abruptly stands.

"dean, i swear,"

he advances on dean in three quick steps.

"to god. tell me what's wrong!"

dean stands. 

"there is nothing wrong, sam! i'm fine."

"like hell! you've been ignoring me since arizona and today you up and punched me! you're telling me there's nothing wrong with that?"

dean swallows thickly.

"as far as i can tell, no."

"dammit, dean!"

sam pushes dean against the wall.

"just tell me!"

he's too close to dean, too fucking close, it's not good, not good at all, not when sam's stupid aftershave assaults dean's nostrils and not when dean can see every single fleck in sam's eyes, and not when he's being basically harassed by sam, and

he doesn't know why he does it,

he just.

he kisses sam.

it's short and chaste and dean hates himself for it.

sam stumbles back, looking at dean with a mixture of feelings that dean can't read. 

dean shuts his eyes and punches himself mentally.

he hears sam walk out the door.

dean breaks open the mini-bar and divests it of anything that has alcohol in record time.

sam still isn't back by morning but,

dean has a hangover for the first time in a long time.

he beats himself up every hour on the hour, 

decides that he needs more alcohol and,

on an empty stomach, he walks to the bar. 

he's on his fifth whiskey by 5 in the afternoon.

he pays the bartender and dreads the walk back to the motel. 

he feels like a man on death row, walking towards the hangman's noose, but

he feels empty, like he missed his last meal.

with dread in his stomach and clouds in his mind, 

he opens the door to his room slowly, oh so slowly.

he really doesn't know what he expected but sam is there, 

sitting on the foot of one of the beds. 

when he sees dean, he manages a weak smile.

dean averts his gaze and walks hurriedly to the bathroom. 

he runs the hot water on the tap and washes his face.

when he looks back up, sam is at the door. dean freezes, staring at his brother through the mirror. 

sam's face is unreadable. he walks towards dean carefully, treating his brother like a baby deer, eyes too wide and easily scared. 

dean's face is still wet but, 

sam doesn't really mind when he touches it lightly.

"it's okay," he whispers. "it's gonna be fine."

he kisses dean.

dean is mostly startled and pulls away,

splutters for a few seconds,

then sam is kissing him again and,

dean melts into sam, pouring everything he's never said onto sam's lips.

they leave the motel that night, 

smiling at each other.

it's a new moon, and the sky is riddled with stars but,

it feels like the moon dare not show her face,

else she'd intrude on their private world.

dean watches the sunrise from the side of the road, car stopped for a few hours sleep. 

he hangs up his sun-catching lasso for good,

and he makes peace with the sun,

their race over.

dean's got something that's much better,

and much purer,

than any celestial body could offer. 

and that's sam.


End file.
